


Sempiternal

by bloodsongs



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 05:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsongs/pseuds/bloodsongs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The years are long and lonely. Merlin learns to shoulder the pain and grief that haunts his every step, while a beloved and familiar presence eventually grows to seek him out every Samhain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sempiternal

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to just write some kind of short personal headcanon for any fandom/pairing, and this happened.

When the nights grow longer, cold dark stretches of loneliness through the years, the spirits stir, restless and curious.

Merlin feels it in his bones, the magic kindling sleepily to life. He doesn’t register the passing of the seasons anymore, barely notices summer’s death and the beginning of fall’s reign every year, not when they seem so fleeting. But he knows when it’s Samhain, when the dead call to the living, sometimes imploring to remember them.

It’s not Samhain anymore, though, is it? It’s Halloween, now. Halloween, and feasts and rituals have given way to the rise of sweetmeats and children carrying small carved pumpkins all over the gray roads, wide-eyed and knocking on doors in countries worldwide. Merlin knows, because that’s when Arthur goes to him.

Oh, not in person, not in the flesh; he should be so lucky. Arthur murmurs his name and Merlin registers the sound when he’s slipping into unconsciousness, sees gold behind his eyelids that’s the lovely wheat colour of Arthur’s hair, hears the laugh that breaks his heart every time it rings in his dreams, warm and familiar.

The week leading up to Samh– Halloween is trying, bare snatches of words and one-sided conversations he can’t reach no matter how he turns in his dreams, no matter how he runs. He can’t see Arthur then, no shadows, no light, just a void of absence in his space between dream and the waking as he calls plaintively and futilely for Arthur—

—like that one time he was lost in the woods and Arthur’d run off after a buck and Merlin had genuinely panicked for a moment there, that particular forest being so steeped in magic it’d thrown his own off-balance and he really thought he was royally fucked as he yelled Arthur’s name until he was hoarse and Arthur had walked up behind him and tackled him to the ground, casual as you please, saying, “Merlin, you’re making way too much noise and disrupting the peace,” and he’d been so indignant and full of relief and—

—but then the dreams become clearer, the voices become louder, and one night, there Arthur’ll be, all golden and beautiful and unchanging. He doesn’t always wear mail, some years, complaining that he might be dead but it still weighs and clinks something wicked, sometimes opting for a plain tunic or gambeson sans the armour and on a few memorable occasions, the jackets Merlin’s seen him don at the greatest of feasts, regal and every inch the king.

Merlin's king. Albion's king.

But he smiles, always, when he sees Merlin approaching, light footsteps that break into a run when he catches sight of Arthur, and then he’s laughing, and crying, and then they fall into an embrace together in the strange, wispy world of dreams.

Merlin wakes up, he always does, but for a few nights every year, the agonising wait for Arthur’s return is made just that little bit more bearable when he can brush his thumb over that little dimple Arthur forgets he has tucked down the side of his mouth, kiss his frustration and his sorrows away when he closes his eyes and pulls Arthur closer to him to take him in, to tell Arthur again and again that he’s a pillock, an idiot, and he misses him and misses him and misses him and wants nothing more than to have his brawny, boisterous self back in his life.

And Arthur will smirk and kiss him back, punching him lightly on the shoulder, but his eyes will be soft when he agrees, when he says of course, and that he misses Merlin too, his idiot of a manservant, misses and wants and needs and loves, so much, and that he’ll be back, please wait, won’t you, just wait for me, be there for me, forever—

—and Merlin says, yes, always yes, as he breathes Arthur in, ignoring the illusion, ignoring the dream, forgetting reality for just another night.


End file.
